sniper

*BANG*
You just got hit by the sniper hidden in your bookshelf. Snipers use long-range weapons to take out strategic and tactical targets, usually while remaining concealed from enemy detection.
Some people complain that sniping is a dishonerable, underhanded tactic. A paladin, especially the AD&D kind, would scoff at killing an enemy in any manner other than face-to-face. However, I think it's all subjective anyways. Sniping can be incredibly useful, even as a scare tactic. Imagine if you're sitting around making small talk with your friends, and all of a sudden, two of them fall to the ground stond dead to the sound of rifle shots. You never see your attackers. You have no idea if they're still out there, waiting for a clean shot on you. You spend the next couple of weeks, months, years looking over your shoulder.

Sniper

A Quake Team Fortress Class

The Sniper class moves at a medium speed, and wears as little armor as the Scout: a maximum of 50 green armor. He carries the axe, nailgun, and Sniper Rifle. His grenade types are Hand and Flares. His sniper rifle makes him the ideal class for long-distance defense, but his lack of close-range weaponry means he's got trouble if the opponent should get within range.

Sniper Rifle: The rifle uses shotgun shells for ammo, and operates in one of two modes:

- Single Shot. With a reload time of 1.5 seconds, this mode is what sniping is all about. One shot from this will kill most players except for a heavily armored soldier or heavy weapons guy. The longer you aim, the more damage the sniper shot will do. To aim, just keep holding down the fire button. When aiming, the view slowly zooms in. N.B. You can toggle this feature using the "autozoom" command.

- Auto Shot. Although this fire mode does a lot less damage than single shot and uses a lot of ammo, its great for picking off a wounded target, or a fast moving scout. The other tricky bit about the sniper rifle is that it is a rifle. You can't just snap shot from the hip with it. If you're moving too fast, the rifle simply won't fire.

Commands:

"autozoom" : Toggle the automatic zooming of the sniper rifle.

On eBay and other online auctions, a sniper is that person that waits until the last second to bid on an item and take it away from you. In most cases, practicing sniping will get you an item for cheaper than if you would have depended on the proxy bidding systems (entering your max amount to begin with). Don't have the time to sit there and wait for the auction to end? There are many internet services and programs now that will bid on an item a few minutes (or seconds) before the auction ends. Aren't connected to the internet 24/7 and have a modem? Some even dial your modem for you.

When sniping first started to become popular, it was something many got mad about. Prior to sniping you had an idea of how much an item would sell for well before it's end. After sniping, it became very frustrating to see the item you thought you'd win for around $40 all of a sudden be lost in the last few seconds for $80. Some became so frustrated they even went on crusades, publicly refusing to snipe on moral grounds hoping that they could stem the sniping tide. Sniping has since become an established part of the online auction world, though.

People who hunted "snipe" a type of English game bird in medieval times, were known as snipers. Hunting snipe required stealth, a concealed location, and accurate aim.

From this application sniping was borrowed as a military term to describe the same kind of action, but with an enemy as the target instead of a bird.